.AFRICA to be open for business in July

It has been announced that .AFRICA will be generally available to public from 4th July, 2017. The launch phases of sunrise and land rush will take place shortly, which will then be followed by general availability. The tentative date for the first two phases is reported as 4th April, 2017.

Earlier this month, it was reported that ICANN had announced that the California Superior Court turned down DotConnectAfrica’s (DCA’s) motion for injunction to stop the delegation of the .AFRICA gTLD to ZA Central Registry (ZACR). ICANN has therefore delegated .AFRICA to ZACR after the legal dispute.

Lucky Masilela, CEO, ZACR said:

All attempts to stall the public availability of the .AFRICA geographic top-level domain have failed and it’s now time to create the next chapter in the .AFRICA story.

The Sunrise phase will be open to intellectual property rights holders and the Landrush phase will see premium name applicants applying for .AFRICA domains.

Masilela added:

General availability should commence on 4 July, and this is when the general public can apply for their .AFRICA domain names.

Website names ending in .AFRICA are set to become hot property in cyberspace as the continent’s most loved brands snap up their digital presence.